Benjamin Ackerman

PhD Candidate

About Me:

I am a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health working with Dr. Elizabeth Stuart. My dissertation research focuses on statistical methods for assessing and improving upon the generalizability of randomized trials. My applied public health interests include Autism Spectrum Disorders, mental health, and LGBT health.

Recent Posts

This is my first time doing 🎉Tidy Tuesday🎉 ! The data for this week came from a FiveThirtyEight blogpost, which breaks down post-college salaries by discipline. The documentation and data for this week can be found in this GitHub repo.
One thing I found really interesting in the data was the variable College_jobs, which counted the number of people per major with jobs that required a college degree. I wanted to use this information to look at each major’s median income by percent of recent grads employed in positions requiring/not requiring college degrees.

About three years ago, I received a letter in the mail from Nielsen inviting me to participate in one of their panels. After spending a while on the phone with a representative to determine that it wasn’t a scam, I figured I’d give it a go. I tend to take great interest in knowing where data come from (especially when reporters and media sources try to use statistics to make a point), and as an avid tv watcher, it was cool to learn more about how Nielsen generates ratings and estimates program viewership.